


Purr-ever and Always

by bluflamingo



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Cat Cafés, Gen, Gen Work, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 15:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15003725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluflamingo/pseuds/bluflamingo
Summary: Kent pledges $10,000 to Las Vegas' first ever cat cafe.Then the rest of the Aces get involved, and things kind of spiral from there.





	Purr-ever and Always

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KittPurson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittPurson/gifts).



"What's a cat cafe?" Kent asked, kicking his feet up as he scrolled through his phone on the latest in a string of road trip hotel beds.

Jeff shrugged. "A café you can take your cat to?"

"Oh, cool, we should totally take Kit, she’d love it!"

Kit and Kent together were a dangerous combination, and even more so in public. "Why are you asking?"

Kent rolled over, holding out his phone, Facebook open and showing a really cute tabby kitten. "Maud just contributed to one through Kickstarter."

"And there was a cat, so of course you’re curious."

"Duh," Kent said taking back his phone and scrolling again. "Huh, okay, it’s not a cafe for cats, listen: _Purr-ever and Always gives shelter cats in Las Vegas a second chance at a loving home, combining all the comfort of your favorite coffee shop with the chance to hang out with cats looking for a Purr-ever home._ "

"Kit would probably move out if you adopted another cat." She wouldn't - Kit still tried to curl herself into a circle in Kent's lap, despite being way too big for that - but the suggestion made Kent glare and turn his phone face down on the bed.

"That's cool, though," he said after a minute, scooping his phone back up and tapping at the screen. "Like, obviously Kit was always going to come home with me, but if she hadn't..."

Jeff had gone with Kent when he picked out Kit at the shelter, unsurprised that Kent wasn't deterred from her even after finding out she had diabetes, but Kent had shared enough posts about sick cats on Facebook for Jeff to know that Kit was more likely than most kittens to grow up in the shelter. "But now she's yours, and you take the best care of her," he said gently.

Kent nodded, still tapping at his phone - probably pulling up the latest pictures of Kit from his cat-sitter. "Still, though." More tapping. "It's a good cause, right? And everyone likes cats."

"Your cat has more Instagram followers than you, so I'm going to say yes." 

"Okay." Kent nodded, crunching up to sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed. "I'm going to pledge in her name, in that case."

There wasn't any point arguing when Kent decided to spend money on something cat-related, and this was at least more useful than the three-storey cat tower that Kit never used.

In retrospect, Jeff should have maybe at least asked how much Kent intended to pledge.

*

"Ten thousand dollars? In your cat's name?" DJ demanded the moment the elevator doors opened for Jeff and Kent to get in. "You're the living definition of more money than sense, Parse."

Kent shrugged, just the lightest flush appearing high on his cheeks. "The cat cafe?" Jeff asked, like he really needed to. What else would Kent have (a) spent $10,000 on and (b) shared on every social media platform he used? 

"It's for cats who'd be euthanised otherwise," Kent said, only barely managing not to sound defensive. Jeff understood how weird it was to go from scraping together every dollar for hockey dues to being able to spend $10,000 on a whim; Kent, though, still hadn't adjusted to the new normal, even years out of from the Draft.

"But, cats? Really?" 

"Here." Kent thrust his phone in DJ's face and, despite being an avowed dog person, DJ's expression softened and went kind of soppy. "Can you say no to that face?"

"I could say no to donating ten thousand dollars to that face," DJ said firmly.

Jeff still wasn't all that surprised when DJ's Facebook feed announced, an hour after they beat Carolina, that he'd pledged fifty dollars to Purr-ever and Always on Kickstarter.

It all sort of spiralled from there.

Scraps, because he not-so-secretly aspired to be Kent when he grew up, pledged two hundred dollars, linked the Kickstarter on his twitter, and got the place another three thousand dollars via every junior player he'd ever so much as shared a rink with.

Carts, who'd grown up with his grandparents and their three black cats, pledged five hundred dollars in their names, which resulted in four more Aces, two of the front office staff, and one of the security guards pledging in the names of their own grandparents, and cats they'd known as children.

DJ's ten year old daughter Eve clubbed together with Red's twelve year old son Owen to donate a months' allowance, and then somehow managed to get every other child of an Ace to donate their's as well. Between them, they raised a hundred and fifty-seven dollars.

Jeff quietly kicked in two hundred bucks while he was waiting for Kent to finish messing with his hair and actually get in the car in time for them not to be the last to arrive at the Aces' sponsor dinner. "You promised you'd be ready on time," he called, when it had been nearly five minutes and he could still hear Kent humming to himself in the en-suite.

"You were early," Kent yelled back. Kit's ears twitched at the sound of his voice, and she uncurled herself from where she'd been draped over the arm of the couch, narrowly avoided Jeff's junk as she padded across his lap, and flicked her tail in his face as she went in search of actual Kent.

"I was early when I got here." Jeff followed Kit as she strolled down the corridor towards Kent's bedroom. "But that was twenty minutes ago, on time was ten minutes ago, and you're still not ready."

Kent, when Jeff leant in the open doorway, still wasn't wearing his jacket, though he'd finally done his bowtie, and appeared to be engaged, again, in the futile task of trying to get his cowlick into submission. "Stop it, you look good just like that."

Kent rolled his eyes in the mirror, but did stop messing with his hair. "Have you seen my dress shoes? The black ones?"

"You have four identical pairs of black dress shoes," Jeff told him, and mentally added another ten minutes to the estimate of how late they were going to be.

*

Two days later, Kent flopped into his seat next to Jeff for their flight to Edmonton and shoved his phone into Jeff's lap. "Read that."

Jeff, who'd been planning to sleep through the flight and already had his earbuds in, fumbled Kent's phone and his own iPod, nearly losing both to the gap between their seats. "And hello to you too."

"Yeah, yeah, just - read that and tell me if it sounds like it's real?" Kent was mostly focused on digging his tablet out of his carry-on, but even the sliver of his face Jeff could see looked both embarrassed and kind of needy.

"Sure," Jeff said, tapping the screen to bring up what turned out to be an email. Sent via Kickstarter, it turned out, addressed to _Mr Parson/Ms Purrson_ , thanking them for all their support and asking if they'd maybe like to be an official sponsor...

Jeff stopped reading when the email started listing details of how that would all work, and scrolled back to the top. The header looked genuine, even the technical babble that his sister-in-law had taught him to read last Christmas. "Yes," he said, even though Kent was doing a decent impression of being deeply engrossed in - Jeff checked over his shoulder - video of the Oilers' last game against Minnesota, which they'd lost seven-zero including an embarrassingly avoidable own goal. "I think it's real. Why?"

The back of Kent's neck went red. "It'd be weird, though, right? The whole, like sponsorship thing?" He dropped his voice as DJ and Red, always the last onto the plane, went by with nods for Jeff and shoulder taps for Kent. "Like, oh look at the NHL star trying to pretend like he cares about the world, that's not even real charity."

Jeff gave him a one-armed hug, unsurprised when Kent dropped his head onto Jeff's shoulder. "Don't read your own press," Jeff told him, not for the first time. "And who cares if it's real charity, whatever that is, it's still money for a good cause."

"It's not stupid?" Kent asked, his voice very small.

"No," Jeff said firmly, wishing a little that he'd told Kent he'd made the donation - it would be weird to tell him now. "It's sweet."

*

Their first practice at home after the Canada road-trip, Kent turned up wearing a dark purple hoodie with an exceptionally adorable image of a curled up sleeping cat screen-printed in white on the breast. Jeff raised an eyebrow curiously and Kent grinned, turning to show off the back, which featured the same cat above the text _Purr-ever and Always_. 

"You decided to go for it, then?" he asked as Kent settled into the stall next to his and started on his shoe laces.

"They said I could name one of the cats. And they sent me the hoodie, even though they're only supposed to be a limited run. But, look."

He handed over his phone, which was getting to be as much of a recurring theme as it had been when Kent first got Kit, and every practice started with him thrusting his phone at various team-mates to show off how cute she was. This time, the picture was of Kent, twisted to show both his face and the back of his hoodie, with Kit resting her head on his shoulder. It was time-stamped twenty minutes ago, probably taken and posted right as Kent left for practice, and already had a hundred and seventy-eight likes on Instagram. 

"They're going to start selling these, as well as the Kickstarter thing. Or there's a new pledge option, where they get a hoodie signed by me." Kent flushed a little as he said it, but he looked really pleased - really happy about the whole thing.

"Maybe I should make another donation," Jeff teased. Kent's head popped up, eyes wide with genuine surprise that faded into glee when Jeff nodded.

"You're the best," Kent said, and proved it with a hug that nearly choked Jeff, to the amusement of the other early bird Aces just starting to trickle in.

And then proved it some more by bringing a second Purr-ever hoodie for Jeff at their next practice. 

"You didn't sign it?" Jeff asked, hanging it neatly in his stall, over the jacket he'd worn in, so that everyone would see it.

Kent turned the right cuff back - he'd signed his name, and drawn a tiny sleeping cat after it. 

After practice, DJ took a picture of the two of them wearing their matching hoodies, arms round each other on the ice. Between them, they broke Kent's previous like record on Instagram, and prompted a surge in sales that cleared Purr-ever out of hoodies in less than twenty-four hours.

"They made their goal and then some," Kent explained, reading the latest email from the Purr-ever crew on yet another hotel bed, this time in San Jose. "So they started a funding drive, split between three shelters in Vegas. They want to know if I'll be back in Vegas for a publicity thing in a couple of days."

They were in San Jose for two games, and flying back right after the second. "When is it?"

"Thursday." Kent scrolled some more, then made a face. "Ugh, at six thirty in the morning, they want to do it before the shelter opens to the public, and Tina's got a shift at seven thirty."

"We're not playing again until Friday," Jeff said, since Kent's face clearly implied that he was planning to go, despite the timing meaning he'd get maybe five hours of sleep once their plane landed. "Thursday skate's optional."

Kent nodded, tapping absently at his phone screen. Jeff gave him a minute to actually say something, then went to sit next to him, let Kent press into his arm with a sigh. "What?"

"Will you come with me?" Kent asked, still looking at his phone. "I know it's early, but I've never met any of the people from the café before…"

One of the things Jeff has always found weirdest about Kent was how he was simultaneously completely comfortable with strangers who he didn't expect to think anything much of him, and a well-concealed nervous wreck around strangers whose opinion he actually cared about. By all accounts, he'd barely spoken to anyone at his first All-Star Game, at least until Oshie took him under his wing.

"Six thirty in the morning," Jeff grumbled, giving Kent a one-armed hug. "It's a really good thing I love you."

*

For all that Jeff was _not_ a six-thirty in the morning kind of person, the shelter thing was fun. Tina, ¬¬who was heading up the café project, was hilariously uninterested in hockey, and professed to think Kent and Jeff play field hockey so intently that Jeff honestly couldn't tell if she was serious. The shelter people were great, thrilled by the amount already raised for them and the café, and excited to show Kent and Jeff round all the different ¬¬rooms.

They wound up, of course, in the kitten room, and lurking in the back corner, was a Maine Coon kitten, the spitting image of Kit when Kent first brought her home. "Hey, baby," Kent cooed, already going to his knees near her, one hand offered for her to sniff. 

"She's new here," the shelter director, Jackie, told Jeff. The kitten was edging slowly over to Kent, who looked like he'd completely forgotten why he was there, and possibly that there were other people there at all. Jeff started running through his arguments for why Kent definitely couldn't get a second cat, especially another Maine Coon. "She was just dropped off last week, the kids turned out to be allergic."

Jeff winced; Kit was great, but he always went home from Kent's with a fine layer of fur on everything. 

"Exactly," Jackie said, laughing a little. "She's a sweetheart though, even for her size, she won't have any trouble finding a new home."

"We'd love to have her in the café," Tina added, watching as the kitten climbed onto Kent's lap, front paws on his shoulders as he scratched at the base of her spine. "She needs so much space though, it wouldn't be fair. But maybe we could take some photos of her with you?" she added, voice raised to get Kent's attention. 

The pictures were almost criminally cute, and the shelter choosing to name her Kit the Second turned her, very briefly, into an Instagram star to rival the original Kit. Kent checked in on her almost every day, despite promising that he definitely wouldn't try to take her home. 

"I heard about Kit Two," he finally said, getting into Jeff's car after training, nearly three weeks since the shelter visit. "This family took her, they want to have her train as a therapy cat for their daughter."

"That's sweet," Jeff said, having no idea how you'd train a therapy cat, or even that such a thing existed.

"She's only six but they said she's got really bad anxiety. They're hoping she can maybe get back into school, if they can train Kit Two properly."

"Cool," Jeff said, reaching over to pat Kent's knee as they stopped at a red light, and accepted that pictures of Kit Two and her brand new tiny mistress would inevitably join the rotation of 'here, look at this' phone moments in the near future.

*

Purr--ever launched in September, the opening night neatly slotted between training camp and the Aces' first pre-season game. The top tier of pledges to the Kickstarter were invited, as well as all the staff and volunteers from the partner shelters, a host of Vegas locals, and, of course, the Aces and associates. 

The reception itself was held in the parking lot outside the café, with small groups of attendees allowed inside for half an hour at a time to meet the cats and tour the space under Tina's watchful eye. The Aces, almost all of whom had showed up, including DJ and Red's kids and their pocket money consortium, split themselves neatly amongst the groups. Jeff got to go in with three of the pledges, the captain of the Vegas women's basketball team, two journalists he'd never met, and a couple of local school teachers who were working on a joint project between the schools and the café that Jeff nodded his way through, distracted by the ginger tom purring like a motorbike around his ankles.

Kent, when Jeff's group finished up, was chatting to a presenter from the Vegas morning radio show and the parents of the little girl who'd adopted Kit Two. He looked pretty happy to be there, but when Jeff slid into the space next to him, the grin Kent sent him held more than a touch of relief. "Can I borrow him?" Jeff asked with his best company smile.

"Thanks," Kent said as they melted, if only temporarily, into the crowd of people drinking champagne and geeking out about cats. 

"No sweat." Jeff handed over the glass of soda and lime he'd persuaded the pop-up bar-tender to put in a martini glass. "When's your turn?"

"I gave it to Scraps. He wouldn't stop gushing about the black cat with the missing ear."

Jeff had seen that one, perched up high and hissing at anyone who got within touching distance, basically the polar-opposite of Scraps and his guileless friendship. Kent just shrugged, so Jeff decided not to ask. "Go talk to Tina, she'll slot you in somewhere."

Kent shrugged again, fidgeting with his tie a little. "It's cool. I've been in there before."

"I've never seen you turn down an opportunity to hang out with cats," Jeff teased. He turned them slightly, so he had his back to most of the crowd and Kent was partially hidden. "You okay?"

"This is weird, right?" Kent took a big gulp of his drink. "The whole – that radio guy, he said this was all down to me, that they'd never have gotten the money otherwise, and he meant it nicely, but…"

Jeff gave him a quick hug, comfortable in the press of people in the same Purr-ever hoodies they were both wearing. "Take the compliment," he said gently. "You're a big part of this, it's okay to be proud of that. And you know it helped them, having your name – having you – be part of this."

"I know." Kent looked over Jeff's shoulder, catching someone's eye. "Sorry I'm being weird."

"Trust me, I am more than used to you and your weirdness," Jeff promised, smiling. 

He didn't have chance to add anything, as Tina appeared at his side, already reaching for Kent's arm. "Come on, kiddo." She tugged and Kent went; Jeff followed out of habit. "I need some more pictures of you with the kitties, and you look like a man who needs to tickle some furry tummies."

"I can wait," Kent started, but Tina just kept tugging him through the crowd towards the group of people waiting outside the door of Purr-ever. 

"You can, but you're not going to." Tina stopped at the edge of the group, which, on closer inspection, included two young women wearing Kent's playoff jersey and holding hands. "Everyone, this is Kent, and Jeff, they're going to tag along with us. Let me run through the rules one more time, and then we'll head inside. The most important thing to remember is…"

Jeff tuned out for the recitation, just focussing on Kent, the way he relaxed as the attention shifted to Tina, the excitement that stole over his face when Tina led them through the front door and the ginger tom who'd been purring at Jeff earlier made straight for Kent.

Kent wasn't wrong, it was kind of weird, but it was also a really good night, and even with a fine layer of cat fur on his best dress pants, Jeff wouldn't have missed it.


End file.
